HE was regarded as a brilliant and charming politician but the women who helped David Lloyd George reach the top of his game remained backroom players until Ffion Hague told their story.

Now Ffion, the wife of the Conservative Party’s Shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague, will detail the emotional triangle between Lloyd George and his two wives in an hour-long television documentary.

The insights into this tale of passion and politics are the culmination of years of research by Ffion for her highly-acclaimed book, The Pain and Privilege: The Women in Lloyd George’s Life.

While Lloyd George’s political achievements have long been celebrated with the same awed appreciation as his success with the ladies, Ffion hopes to show the strength and worth of his first wife, Margaret Owen, and his mistress of three decades, Frances Stevenson, who became his second wife.

She says: “Though I’m from the south, I can remember being captivated at a very young age by the story of Lloyd George and his family.

“I remember going to Llanystumdwy as a little girl and seeing the grave and asking myself where his wives were. I wanted to know more. In their letters and diaries, in their own words, I came across a captivating story of love, sacrifice, betrayal and deceit. But more than that, the story of two pioneering and influential women who tore up the conventions of the period.”

The two female protagonists are the strong, quiet, determined farmer’s daughter, Maggie Owen, who became a popular figure during the Great War. She is the only Prime Minister’s wife until Sarah Brown to publicly campaign for her party in a by-election and the first woman in Wales to become a JP.

With Frances – who, as Lloyd George’s mistress, had lots of evenings and weekends free and partly filled this time writing daily about her life with Lloyd George – Ffion drew on her “incredible diaries” to reveal the private thoughts of a woman who became a significant political operator.

Ffion says: “I was so lucky to find a story that was this dramatic and to have a viewpoint that hadn’t been done before. What immediately fascinated me was the fact he relied so much on the women and therefore they must have been strong and capable, and yet we didn’t know anything about them.

“When I looked at the material, I saw a lot of events were described in their own words with diaries and memoirs that hadn’t been published.

“I started off thinking of telling Margaret’s story but you can’t really tell that without Frances and I found both of them to be extraordinary pioneering women who went much further in their careers than was the norm for the time.

“I am trying to get across in the programme that there was pain and privilege in both of their lives. The women did suffer greatly because of Lloyd George’s behaviour and because of his chronic infidelity, but they also made the most of every opportunity that came their way.

“Here were two fascinating and pioneering women who both got to places they might never have done because of the age in which they lived.

“Margaret was the first female JP in Wales and the first woman to chair a district council. She was an absolutely fundamental figure in North Wales. She was the chair and president of many charities. She forged a career for herself in the end which was quite separate from him and remained in North Wales independent and happy.

“With Frances, he said ‘You can’t work for me unless we have a relationship’ so she joined his staff, and in 1913 was the first woman to work directly to a cabinet minister. She was the first ever female principal private secretary in Number 10 and afterwards worked on his political campaigns and speeches. She was on first name terms with world leaders and statesmen.

“Frances was a central figure who had real respect. She was a real private secretary who helped with his policy work. She would never have had those opportunities otherwise and there’s that balance of the pain and privilege.”

As well as including striking footage of the locations in which this real-life saga was played out – Cricieth, Llanystumdwy, Bardey Island, London and Churt in Surrey – the programme also includes the first television interview with Frances Stevenson’s daughter, Jennifer Longford, as well as a tour around 10 Downing Street led by Gordon Brown’s wife, Sarah.

Ffion says: “I think the fact there wasn’t one woman in his life was a strong factor in allowing these women to take opportunities. If one had been expected to be at his side all the time then they would not have had the time and opportunity to develop their own interests.

“Margaret had a separation from her husband when he wanted to continue to work on national politics after 1922 and had she not been able to hand over care of him, she wouldn’t have developed the stunning career she had in the 1920s and 1930s. I think that Margaret was my starting point and that’s why I returned to her.

“There are so many points of reference for me. Both of us are Welsh speakers, Calvinistic and Methodist, and very rooted in our Welsh backgrounds so I immediately identified with Margaret.

“I tried very hard to step into Frances’ shoes. I was a civil servant. I worked as Private Secretary to a cabinet minister. I have seen that mix of politics and government and I hadn’t fully appreciated how she opened doors to female civil servants. And so I do admire Frances and some of her actions are truly admirable, particularly in the way she cared for him in his last years, but for me the true heroine is Margaret.”

Frances, who was governess to Lloyd George’s daughter, Megan, first fell under his spell in 1912 when she was 23 and he was 48 and they eventually married in 1943, two years after Dame Margaret’s death.

It might seem curious that such strong, capable women tolerated such a triangle – at one stage in Number 10, Margaret was living upstairs and Frances was in the office downstairs – without calling time on a situation which gave as much pain as it did privilege.

Ffion says: “I think it’s important to remember the context of the age. In this age it’s difficult for us to imagine how much of a stigma it was back then to divorce. In those times it would have ended Lloyd George’s career and today, we have still never had a divorced Prime Minister.

“We take a different view now but then, if Margaret had provoked a divorce, she was ending his career and their life as a family, and Frances joined in with this knowing Lloyd George was nothing if not focused on his career.

“They saw his duty. He was the man who won the war. His elevation to Prime Minister was the single most significant fact in winning the war.”

It wasn’t all sophisticated restraint for the good of the country and there were times when the man called The Goat nearly had his cover blown, though usually Margaret stayed in the family home in Cricieth while Frances, a contemporary of Lloyd George’s eldest daughter Mair, who died young, was in London.

“There were several moments when one of other of the women became so unhappy there was the threat of a scandal,” says Ffion.

So what drew such astute, accomplished women to Lloyd George, the great politician, orator and Prime Minister who, according to AJ Sylvester, may have been short in stature but made up for it in other areas.

His son, Dick, once remarked of his father that “with an attractive woman he was as much to be trusted as a Bengal tiger with a gazelle”.

Ffion says: “I think there were three elements of his attraction. One was that he had a charm and personal magnetism that made you feel as if you were the only person in the universe.

“He also read people very well and played on their strengths and weaknesses so he played on duty with Margaret and her Methodist upbringing to sustain the work he was doing.

“With Frances he played on their romance. He used to write these amazingly passionate letters saying he couldn’t get on without her. He played on her desire to be needed.

“Secondly, there was the whole glamour of power which I am sure was an element. Lloyd George was at the top of his game. He rose to be Prime Minister in nine years. At the end of the war he was one of the most famous men on the planet. When he went to America in 1923, he had a ticker-tape parade in every city and was greeted as a hero.

“The third thing, the most significant thing, is to do with women’s position and their lack of opportunity. He listened to women. He wasn’t like John F Kennedy. He actually liked women. He sought them out and listened to them.”

Ffion says she enjoyed working with the television crew.

“Writing for television was a huge difference – the need for brevity and the dramatic elements – and we had to cut it down to these two women though there were many affairs.

“The producer, Catrin Evans, and director, Nia Dryhurst, were brilliant to work with. I found it a real fun experience, not least because it meant spending time in places like Llanystumdwy, Cricieth, Churt, and even Whitehall, that mean a lot to me.

“I found presenting material that I feel so passionately about is a really rewarding thing to do because I never tire of telling this story.

“It was Jennifer’s first time to get her views on camera and to hear her reminisce about her time with Lloyd George and about what her mother was really like.

“Jennifer was born in 1929 when Frances was 40 years old and she hid the birth by pretending she had adopted a child, which wasn’t that unusual a thing to do then because people were taking in orphans form the war.

“Nobody really questioned that story. When it came out about Jennifer, everyone naturally assumed her father was Lloyd George. But the only time – I think – she was unfaithful to Lloyd George was when she had an affair with the Liberal campaign manager, Thomas Tweed, who was very charismatic.

“Jennifer is asked the big question about who she thinks is her father – and I will leave people to find that out in the programme.

“It was quite difficult to form an opinion on Jennifer’s physical appearance because of her age but I could well believe that there was a resemblance to both men and to Frances. “Interestingly, for the period when Jennifer was conceived, I found a diary that showed Lloyd George was not ill at that time, as was thought, but he was up and about.

“I don’t think we’ll ever know for sure because there is no DNA which is a great pity.”

The programme, made by Llanelli-based company Tinopolis, also includes an interview with Lloyd George’s great niece, Elisabeth George.

Ffion says of Lloyd George: “He was a larger-than-life character. Children in particular were attracted to him. There was a lot of laughter in Number 10 when he was there. Considering it was a terrible, tense period of history, there are lots of anecdotes. Lord Riddell, the newspaper owner, would catch them singing hymns around the piano or having a picnic in one of the bedrooms upstairs. It paints a very warm picture.

“The message really is that behind this successful man were two very dedicated and capable women and their achievements show they were also extraordinarily pioneering.”